Suicides In Alberta Soar In Wake Of Canada’s Oilpatch Depression
Over the past year, we have extensively chronicled the tragic story of Alberta – Canada’s once booming oilpatch – disintegrate slowly at first, then very fast, into an economic and financial wasteland:
- “Canada Crude Contagion: Calgary Home Prices Drop Most In 2 Years”
- “Canada’s Biggest Oil Casualty To Date: Calgary’s Nexen Shutters Oil Trading Desk”
- “The Canadian Housing Bubble Has Begun To Burst”
- “Canada’s Oil Patch Confidence Crashes”
- “Canada Mauled by Oil Bust, Job Losses Pile Up – Housing Bubble, Banks at Risk”
- “The Stage Is Set For A Massive Housing Market Correction in Canada’s Oilpatch”
And, in the last article in this sad series describing the Alberta “bloodbath”, we said that the biggest casualty of Canada’s recession has been the local commercial real estate market, where office vacancies are about to surpass the aftermath of the (first) great financial crisis.
We were wrong: the biggest casualty of Canada’s recession, which unless oil rebounds strongly soon will follow Brazil into an all out depression, are people themselves. As CBC reports the suicide rate in Alberta has increased dramatically in the wake of mounting job losses across the province.
According to the Canadian media, the most recent data only goes to June, but according to the chief medical examiner’s office, 30 per cent more Albertans took their lives in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.
That’s how bad Canada’s economic recession is: the real casualties are no longer metaphorical economic objects, but the very people who until recently enjoyed comfortable lives only to succumb to an unprecedented collapse in the local economy.
Here are the statistics as reported by CBC:
- From January to June 2014, there were 252 suicides in Alberta.
- During the same period this year, there were 327.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
